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After four months of undercover work, Lancaster County sheriff’s investigators and deputies fanned out across the county Tuesday to round up 28 drug suspects.
By the end of the day, they had arrested 15 of them on 48 charges, plus four people charged with other offenses unrelated to the Drug Task Force’s work.
According to the arrest warrants, each of the drug suspects had been involved in an undercover transaction between October 2017 and February 2018.

Law enforcement in Lancaster and the county are investigating two convenience store robberies by unidentified suspects well concealed in camouflage gear.
The first incident happened the night of March 8 at 903 Discount Beverage, 720 Chesterfield Ave. in Lancaster. The most recent robbery happened early Friday morning at Jack’s Highway 9 Party Shop, 2190 Pageland Highway West.
No shots were fired in either robbery, and no one was injured.

Low humidity, gusty winds and one discarded, still-lit cigarette combined to kindle the massive blaze that destroyed three homes Thursday in Sun City Carolina Lakes.
“I’ve seen cigarettes start a fire in grass, but never in 40-mph winds,” said Lancaster County Fire Rescue Director Darren Player.
Player noted that interviews and an initial investigation led county Fire Marshal Russell Rogers to come to that conclusion.
A Sun City resident, he said, told investigators that he was smoking on a porch deck.

KERSHAW – This town’s most anticipated construction project since Haile Gold Mine broke ground Friday, with workers digging footings and assembling pieces of the new playground at Stevens Park.
“So here we are, finally,” said retired physician Jim Timmons, who was manning a portable drill as a group put together one of the many playground component bases that are being cut and built from scratch.
Timmons is the husband of Beverly Timmons, general coordinator for Kershaw Community Parks Council.

More than once, LaVern Shropshire reminded her sons that poor choices might one day lead to unintended consequences.
And that day was Dec. 4, 2015, when her sons – Naquavis Aqueece Benson, 29, and Jarvis Mandrell Benson, 38, along with a friend, 30-year-old Jarvarius Deshawn McGee, were shot to death in a triple homicide at a home near Pineville.
The Bensons, police say, were there for McGee’s birthday.

INDIAN LAND – A fire whipped by strong winds quickly destroyed three houses and damaged two others Thursday afternoon at Sun City Carolina Lakes.
An army of firefighters rushed to the scene from at least six departments, extinguishing the blaze after a little more than two hours. No residents or firefighters were injured.

Staff Reports
Child-abuse charges against a Lancaster father have been dismissed and expunged, and court documents say state investigators found the allegations “unfounded.”
Randy Lorenzo McIlwain of 1446 Winthrop Ave. was charged on April 27, 2017, with three misdemeanor counts of cruelty/depravation to children. His children, who were 7, 12 and 15 at the time of the allegation, were taken into emergency protective custody.

A long-neglected piece of Lancaster’s past near the intersection of S.C. 9 and Old Dixie Road is getting its due.
A historical marker that shows the location of the “County Home/Poor House” cemetery will be dedicated at 3 p.m. Sunday.
And this is one marker that’s a long time coming, said Jessica Blackmon.

Of all the issues in the Indian Land incorporation debate, none sits closer to the heart of the matter for most Panhandle residents than taxation.
With a little more than two weeks left until the March 27 referendum, many voters simply want to know the answer to two basic questions before they decide: How much will it cost and what will it buy me?
The answer is, there’s no way to know until after the decision is made.
If residents decide to incorporate, the new town of Indian Land’s first town council will decide the answers to both questions.